"Although I speak from my own experience, I feel that no one has the right to impose his or her beliefs on another person. I will not propose to you that my way is best. The decision is up to you. If you find some point which may be suitable for you, then you can carry out experiments for yourself. If you find that it is off no use, then you can discard it." Dalai Lama...

Sunday, 28 November 2010

I rang this morning to check if they had had snow. Only 8 inches or so!!

The guy said they have had more in one day than they usually get all year :-)

At the time we spoke it was still snowing heavily and it was forecast to do so all day.Luckily they are not far from the main road and it is all passable with care.Will check back tomorrow before setting off...

We have only had an inch or so here.The kennels we take Beauty and Socks to is a bit remote though and the (long) farm track is only passable with a four wheel drive.Alan will have to park up and trek the mile and a half carrying the cat basket and leading Beauty, with a rucksack full of her bones ( she is fed on a raw food diet so we have to take our own with us) on his back.Luckily he is not phased by that at all and just accepts it will be his morning walk...

So, the snow is making things a little difficult for us but the hot tub is calling, the thought of walking along the loch and in the forest means it is a trip worth doing.

We are taking DVD's and books and games and don't intend to travel far at all.We will probably visit Helensburgh as we spent the first years of our married life at the Naval base there.Apart from that the plan is to totally chill out with plenty of walks and long soaks in the hot tub:-) I have made extra portions each meal this week and have frozen the leftovers to take with us so I will not have to cook at all :-)

Fingers and toes crossed the weather is kind to us for the journey ...

We can come back refreshed and raring to go - we will need to be - we have to tackle the mountain of boxes we had to take out of the loft so it could be insulated.We cleared some bags to charity and some to the rubbish, the rest are filling the dining room at the moment, we can't see the table at all.We want to take the opportunity to sort it now or it will just sit up there for years again.

I will have to get cracking and sell the bags and bags of clothes and toys we have got from the various stages of Emily's life!

Ebay and car boot sales...

Oh, then there is Christmas to think about - haven't started that at all!

Friday, 26 November 2010

It's so cold outside today. It was sunny this morning but that has given way to grey cloudy skies - maybe, just maybe - we will get a share of the snow that is falling elsewhere ;-)

Milly is unwell today.She has been under the weather for a while now.She has had a period of growth and in Emily's cycle that is nearly always followed by a time for relaxing and just being at home.A cough and cold have crept in and that period of cocooning has lasted longer than is usual.

Alan has been able to have the car this week and we have stayed at home.Our days have been spent quietly.I went for a short walk with Beauty on Wednesday afternoon - Milly was happy to be left for half an hour.She was tucked up in bed listening to a story tape. She had the phone with her so she could reach me if needed.The last two days I have not been able to go as Milly has not wanted to be left.Apart from that I have just pottered at home and kept Milly supplied with food and drinks and sat with her or played when she wanted me to:-)

I could have gone out for a walk when Alan got home but it is dark by then and I don't feel as comfortable being out on the country lanes on my own with Beauty.Last year a couple of dogs ran out of the darkness and attacked her!

This afternoon I was preparing some butternut squash and other veg to roast in the oven.I got to thinking about how long the recipe ( for spicy bean burgers) was going to take .Once the veg was chopped it needed to be roasted for 45 min's or so.Then I needed to mix all the ingredients with spices and leave for a couple of hours to marinate so all the flavours developed.Then they could be cooked. I am not a bad cook and sometimes I do enjoy cooking but quite often I find myself wanting to rush through it - as though it isn't an important thing to be doing and my time should be better spent.For some reason today - probably due to the slow ( and seemingly unproductive ) week we have had -the feeling was very strong and I felt agitated.

When I put the veg in the oven I took Milly a mug of hot chocolate and a snack and sat down here with my cuppa and snack. I decided to spend a little time and finish a post I had started to write about our trip to London but realised all the pictures are on Milly's laptop which is away for repair!

So I started writing this instead...

I often find - when we are not doing much and are at home more - the wobbles occur!

Even though Milly is unwell at the moment the thoughts like, I'm not doing enough -I should be planning more activities - going places - meeting up with people - introducing new things to Milly - creep in.

The saying 'Live every day as if it were your last' came into my mind as I was chopping the veg. That evoked images of a life of adventure - rock climbing, abseiling, travelling, out and about, busy, never missing an opportunity to explore, fitting in as many things as possible.
What would I actually do if it was my last day - would I want to be busy - packing as many things into my last day as possible?

I thought it through and I realised that - aside from the obvious limitations I have to tackle rock climbing *grin* - for me 'living each day as if it is your last' has more to do with how I live my life rather than how much I do.

I want to be more mindful - live in each moment.
To appreciate and enjoy the people and activities that make my life worth living..To treat myself well - not in a material way - perhaps just by giving myself the opportunity to lay in a long, hot, bath reading my book and not feel I am wasting time and being lazy.To be fully present and enjoy the cuddles and time spent playing with Milly .To appreciate the fact that I am able to spend my days at home as I do because of my wonderful, supportive husband.

To find joy in all the things ( cooking and cleaning included ) I do every day.

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves."

Guatama Buddha

I read a quote on a lovely new blog I found yesterday that ties in with my thoughts.

"Instead of wondering when your next vacation is you oughtto set up a life you don't need to escape from." Godin

We are looking at our life and trying to find ways to follow our dream, to cut out any causes of stress and live life the way that suits us.We want to simplify things and try to find a way to earn a living that enables us to spend as much time together as possible.We don't want to look back with regret that we didn't do all that was possible to make that happen.

I do think life is an adventure, I think every day there are exciting things to see and new things to learn.They can be small things though - things that are easy to miss if we live at a fast pace.Some of us need the quiet times,our personalities require it.
Balance is the key for me -I will accept the slow, calm, quiet times as being as important and worthwhile
as the busier, active days.

Living life to the fullest does not mean packing every moment full of activity.I believe it is about getting the most amount of pleasure from whatever it is you are doing.

Wobble over!
I'm going to go back to preparing the meal with a different attitude.I'm going to enjoy the process and not rush through it.How wonderful for me to have the luxury to spend time in our warm, cosy, home and spend time lovingly preparing a meal for those that mean the most to me.

Sunday, 7 November 2010

That is going to take longer than I have at the mo.I have managed to get pictures up on facebook and will endeavour to record it on here this week.

Today was going to be a full day of sorting through a bag of Emily's old clothes to list them on Ebay.Very shortly after waking Milly asked if we could do another set up with her Emily strange figures...

A couple of weeks ago I downloaded one of the Emily the strange audio books for Milly to take on holiday to London.She LOVED the story.When we got home she printed off images and made a collage to hang on her bedroom door .Then she printed off pictures of Emily and laminated them and carried them around with her wrapped in a flannel. We played games with them standing them up and acting out scenes with them. Here are the Emily's and her cats - and the accessories milly has made - stuck on card with blue tac to ensure they don't get bent...

We were playing with them yesterday - I needed to get things ready for our bonfire tea and mentioned that she could use some card and place the figures on it to make a scene and photograph it to make a comic style book.- I was careful not to do much more than mention the option, as it is often enough to turn her off if I get too involved in the possible outcome. Milly adapted my idea and made a kind of stage set up.That then became a whole afternoon of setting a scene up and photographing it and then making a new blog to record the many pictures on.

Today we started around twelve o'clock.I had mentioned the possibility of doing a slide show yesterday but she wasn't keen - today she said yes when I offered it up again.I suggested I could do a story board to give us a rough idea of where her story was going and to give us a guide to which pictures to use where in the final slide show.Instead of drawing it out - too time consuming for Emily - I wrote it out scene by scene as she set up the action and got the shots :-)

I had taught myself how to do slideshows last year - I spent hours at the computer perfecting them - I still have things to learn but that experience meant things happened quickly today and Milly stayed with it! She did ask me to promise I would stop and just put the pictures on her blog if the process was moving too slowly for her and she asked me to stop....

With changes of scenery and finding props in the Playmobil box we spent a fabulous afternoon together.The final show was finished around 6.00 pm.
Forgive me for any spelling mistakes and there are parts where things move along a little faster than would be ideal but it has been a loooong day:-))

Milly's Justgiving page for Little Princess Trust.

Milly's Facebook Charity Page

Milly's Charity Blog

Milly's JustGiving Page for Cancer research

We are on a journey....

After taking our daughter out of school we decided on an autonomous approach and set off full of hope. The journey so far has not always been easy - but it has been worth it. We have our happy, funny, loving daughter back again. It also seems possible this unconventional way of living will change our lives for ever. Would you like to join us on the journey as we grow and learn more about unschooling and what it means for us?

Reclaiming our life.

Ebay account

When I set about creating this blog The title and blog description just came to me one night.It simply flowed without thought at all.Many months later I discovered John Holt and this quote!!

"A life worth living and work worth doing - that is what I want for all children." - John Holt.

This is me.....

There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.” Stacey Charter.

Kindness

"This is my simple religion.There is no need for temples; no need for complicatedphilosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." The Dalai Lama.

Karma...

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” Wayne Dyer

A collection of quotes....

Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit... Robert Brault.

'You can't give what you don't have,' some people say, and if you want your children to give generosity and kindness and patience to others, you should give them so much they're overflowing with it. ** —Sandra Dodd

Why we Home educate

( Slightly edited from a blog post I did when we started out) In the end the actual decision to take Emily out only took a matter of days but before that it had been around a year and a half of talking about ti and reading books, Free range education by Terri Dowty, Educating your child at home by Jane Lowe and Alan Thomas were two that had a real impact for different reasons. Free range education has lots of examples of real life home educators and I think I can say that it was this one that convinced me the most that we could do it.We are two very average people ,neither of us left school with many qualifications, we went on to do quite well in our chosen professions and had no need to think about the education system at all until Emily came along.I knew about home education and when Emily was born considered it as an optionbut always felt my lack of education would be a problem and that I wouldn't be capable of providing her with what she would need.Looking back with hindsight it is easy to see how wrong I was!!

School never really suited Emily......After the nursery year at a very highly rated, high achieving school we knew that particular School wasn't for us and took her out. We enrolled her in a lovely village school with only 70 children in the whole school .The ethos of the school was totally different, the children didn't wear uniforms and there was much more emphasis on the children being individuals.The head was a sensitive and principled man who wanted the best for the children. We thought we had struck gold.Over the reception and year 1 Emily gained confidence and really started to bloom. It was at this time she was diagnosed with dyspraxia( we had had to go down the diagnosis route as our observations of Emily's difficulties were not enough to enable the teachers to tailor things so she was helped and given less work in class) but she managed quite well in the more relaxed play orientated early years.Year 2 with more emphasis on academic activities got progressively harder for her. She is very sensitive and it wasn't just the academic side it was the embarassment of having to put her hand up for the toilet,seeing others being told off and worrying in case she did something wrong and got the same treatment, panicking because she couldn't do the work and the teacher never had time to sit with her (alot of this did not come out until she had left school) her behaviour at home became worse and worse she was so angry and obviously stressed . At this time we began to seriously consider taking her out but held back because of my lack of confidence in my ability to provide her with an adequate education ,my health being so poor was also a major stumbling block.

Then in year three it became blatantly obvious that something needed to change .She was struggling on all levels and we couldn't allow the school system to damage our daughter anymore.She became ill with a bug that was doing the rounds and she was off for two weeks , during that time I had a conversation with a friend who home educates her two children and I was so upset I couldn't make a decision and she said just go with whats in your heart and that really helped me to shift my thinking and stop worrying about what I couldn't give her and focus on what I could give her.

We never sent her back.I still get emotional when I think of that time , the look on Emily's face when we told her she would never have to go back to school was priceless,the immense sense of relief that we were off the treadmill of school life and the excitement of the time ahead and to be honest the fear of the unknown......

So here we are four years on and a lot of reading and researching later I feel comfortable with what we are doing . The changes that have happened so far have been helped along the way by the many wonderful blogs out there.They are so varied and there are so many different approaches , I have found ones that I can identify with and have read a lot of archive material that has been written in each and found answers to so many of the questions I have had that they have helped me to sort out what will work best for us .As much as I wish we had done this earlier and saved Emily from the distress that she went through I do believe things happen for a reason and that the time was right for us to take her out and that looking on the bright side one of the benefits is that at least she has had a taste of school and now we all know without a doubt that it is not for us !!!!

It is very liberating to be making decisions based on what works best for us as a family and not what society expects.

About Me

Life really did begin for me at 40! 39 to be precise, when Emily was born ;-).I have been married very happily for 25 years to Alan.I am gradually recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome after 12 years and we are home educating our Twelve year old daughter Emily.Whole life Unschooling is the label I would use to help others understand the way we home educate.In practice that means that Emily has free choice to do what she finds interesting at any given time.We believe that learning happens all the time,in her own way and at her own pace and we aim to provide her with things that are interesting and fun for her to do,but accept if she chooses not to do them.We have moved away from set bedtimes and restrictions on food.With our guidance she is learning to listen to her body.Still working on it and by no means "there" yet but enjoying the journey and the unexpected benefit has been the growth Alan and I have gone through having to challenge our thinking about educational/parenting methods.It's all good and getting better by the day.

Home ed group today.We actually managed to get to it this week!! It has been AGES since we made it to a meet up with the group - various rea...

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves."Buddha

I found this at the bottom of my Blog and decided I like it so much it needed to be somewhere I can see it daily ;-))Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, thouroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly shouting, 'WOW'.... Beth Moore.

petal

created for me by milly

play now

A few qoutes I like....

Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, thouroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly shouting, 'WOW'.... Beth Moore

The perpetual testing of public school children is like a gardener constantly pulling his plants up by the roots to see if they are growing....(unknown)

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instuction...Helen Kellers teacher

I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand...Confusious